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Turkish Airlines (which we recently learned is rebranding as Türkiye Hava Yolları….and yes, I had to copy and paste that name from One Mile at a Time’s post) has launched a new route to Seattle and in celebration of the new route they will be offering a 25% discount on award flights on bookings made from June 24, 2022 to December 24, 2022 for travel during that same period. This could make for an outstanding deal for a pretty long flight.
The Deal
- Turkish Miles & Smiles is offering a 25% discount for award tickets on its newly opened Seattle route for bookings and travel between June 24, 2022 – December 24, 2022 (note that this post is publishing on June 23rd, so the sale isn’t live yet for a few hours)
- Direct link to this deal
Key Terms
- The offer is valid for tickets issued between 24/06/2022–24/12/2022, with travel dates between 24/06/2022–24/12/2022.
- Campaign will provide 25% Miles discount on one-way or round-trip, Business Class and Economy Class promotional award tickets on Turkey flights from/to Seattle.
- Changes in reservation for award tickets issued within the scope of the promotion are allowed, taking into account the ticketing 24/06/2022–24/12/2022 and the travel date of 24/06/2022–24/12/2022.
- Miles can be refunded within 1 year of the date on which the ticket is issued.
- Miles&Smiles Award Ticket rules apply within the scope of the special offer.
- All taxes will be charged.
- Promotional award tickets are subject to availability due to limited seat capacity.
- Ticketing and travelling periods start and end according to the local time in Turkey.
- The related promotion is only valid on scheduled flights operated by Turkish Airlines. It is not valid on Turkish Airlines codeshare flights, Star Alliance partner airline flights and AnadoluJet flights.
- Tickets subject to this special offer can be issued through our call center, online channels, agencies and sales offices.
- The right of use cannot be transferred within the scope of the offer.
- This offer is only valid to Miles&Smiles members. To benefit from the offer, non-members must first register to Miles&Smiles Program.
- Turkish Airlines reserves the right to take legal action against the related parties found to have contravened any rules.
- Turkish Airlines reserves the right to change terms and conditions, definitions and other information pertaining to the special offer and to cancel the offer at any time.
Quick Thoughts
This sale won’t be live until 6/24. Terms indicate that it starts and ends based on the time in Turkey, so this should go live at 5pm Eastern time today (6/23).
This could be a terrific deal because Turkish already has one of the lowest saver-level business class prices for flights between the US and Europe at the normal saver level of 45K miles each way. If you were able to find saver-level business class seats, you’d pay just 33,750 miles each way (plus taxes and moderate surcharges).
Taxes & fees come to around $75-$100 each way in economy class or around $200-$220 each way in business class. Economy class isn’t a terrible deal at 22,500 miles each way, though I’d happily pony up the extra 11,250 miles and ~$100 for flat bed business class any day of the week.
The problem is that at the moment I am not seeing any saver-level business class availability on any of the smattering of dates I tested in either direction. Instead, I’m seeing the equivalent of an “anytime” price of 105K miles one-way. Even after the 25% discount, I wouldn’t be very excited about that (and based on the terms, I don’t think the discount would apply to the “anytime” price but only the “promotional” price — their term for “saver” price). I’m wondering if maybe they are holding back saver space in anticipation of the sale and will release some when this goes live. One can hope.
It’s worth noting that the sale here is only on Turkish-operated flights. I’m not positive whether it will be valid on connecting itineraries that go beyond Istanbul.
Our guide to Turkish Miles & Smiles focuses on finding Star Alliance availability, so if you’re familiar with the Star Alliance booking tool, note that this sale should be easier to find. When searching for Turkish-operated flights, you can just check the box on the home page that says “Award ticket – buy a ticket with miles”. If the next page appears blank apart from your search cities and date, that means there are no flights on that date. Try hitting the “next” button to move back or forward by a day.
Once you find a day with availability, you should be able to expand the weekly calendar view:
Note that those columns showing 30,000 miles show you which days have flights available. Clicking them makes the column you clicked turn blue. It doesn’t do anything else. You might expect that it would switch to viewing availability for the date with the blue column, but it doesn’t. You have to manually change the date by clicking the “next” arrow or changing your search date (the Turkish website isn’t the finest award booking engine, but it operates OK once you get to know unintuitive quirks like those).
If you do find saver-level business class on your dates or if you’re an economy class traveler looking to fly to Istanbul from Seattle, this could be worth booking. Turkish charges a cancellation fee of just $25 per passenger, so if plans change it won’t cost you a ton. Changes theoretically cost the same amount. I’m not sure whether changes on Turkish metal are easier (maybe they can be handled online?), but I’ve struck out finding phone agents capable of making a change to an itinerary in the past (instead I just put a hold on what I wanted and then cancelled and used the refunded miles to ticket the new itinerary).
I wonder if this will come in handy for the #3Cards3Continents challenge . . .
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[…] 25% discount on Turkish awards to/from Seattle (biz class from 33,750 – maybe) by FM. […]
Is it common for Turkish to charge saver-level award rates for their own flights but not make these same flights available to partners (as does SQ)?
I haven’t generally noticed that, but I have run into it on a very specific route I was trying to book for our three cards three continents challenge, so maybe it does happen. Though in the case of the root I’m having trouble with, there are a number of other things that might be at play.
As a somewhat related data point, there was lots of biz partner availability from SEA in 1/23.
P2 and I live in SF Bay Area. Almost no saver flights all the way out in calendar to Istanbul from SF or LA. Did find some in Seattle. This was a month ago. So….going SF-SEA-IST and back same way. 170k round trip for two. Plus around $800 in fees!!! Grrr. (Saved 10k points bc of citi rewards plus card)
Just booked SEA-IST-ASR to hopefully see Cappadocia! Used United’s calendar to check for saver availability and dates are indeed extremely limited. Looks like adding a domestic leg from IST to elsewhere in Turkey keeps the discounted price of 33.75k miles, but going to European cities like FCO or ATH bumps the price back up to 45k miles.
Thanks for the helpful tip, will try that!
Great info on the domestic connection keeping the discounted pricing!
Would love to see if any good deals originating from SEA, Tim? 🙂
Funny you should mention this.,I was on the Turkish site the other day and couldn’t find literally any saver biz class (even a year out and even on directs from US to IST). I’m curious if others have seen this or is it a prelude to a devaluation?
Have you searched award space anywhere in the world on any airline lately? A number of blogs have covered the unprecedented lack of award space across the board right now. I have no idea whether or not Turkish will devalue, but the lack of saver space is not at all unique to them. Even routes connecting points outside of the United States have been difficult.
Seems a little snarky there Nick… Yes I realize things are tight everywhere. It’s just I think you should be transparent that Turkish seems to have an award chart that does not reflect reality. I didn’t check every route (mainly ATL – IST) but when you can’t find any saver award (45K in biz class) even at the end of their calendar OR in the worst of off-peak (Jan/Feb), it makes you question whether they really offer these fares. I think of that as a stealth devaluation — not ever having saver redemption fares in spite of whatever the chart says.
Apologies — didn’t intend it to be snarky at all — I was just saying that if lack of saver space were an indication of devaluation, we’d be expecting devaluations to almost all award programs. Again, that’s not to say that Turkish (or other airlines) won’t change their award chart, just that the near-universal dearth of award availability is about the same for most programs right now.
And you’re right that lack of saver availability is a problem, and I’m not defending the lack of saver-level space, I’m just saying that it is hardly a unique factor that leads me to expect something nefarious since what’s happening with them is nearly universal at the moment. My best guess is demand is just that high and staffing that low that nobody feels the need to offer much saver award space. I dislike that as much as anyone (especially since I’m in the middle of trying to plan a big trip), but I think that making any broad assumptions or generalizations about “stealth devaluations” or calling it a “prelude to a devaluation” based on award availability during this specific sliver of time when everyone seems to be in the same boat is painting with too broad a stroke. I think the current lack of saver availability is more indicative of current demand than of any long-term award chart trends. That said, if demand keeps up and staffing doesn’t increase accordingly, maybe we will see programs devalue. I don’t think Turkish is any more or less likely to change their chart than any other airline. The truth is that I’ve said before that I don’t expect Turkish to change their award chart because whoever programmed the site left long ago and they don’t want to dump the resources into hiring someone to reprogram the system for a new set of award prices. That statement was made half-jokingly — but then it did take them like a year to fix the checkout button on their website so you could actually book an award online….
Again, none of that is meant with snark at all. You asked whether it was a prelude to a devaluation and I pointed out that what you’re seeing on Turkish is far from unique, so that doesn’t seem like much of an indicator to me. If everyone else had easy-to-find saver space and it was only Turkish charging these high rates and planes were empty, I’d say you’re on to something. In the current environment, lack of saver space is hugely annoying/bothersome, but not particularly indicative of much and I imagine not likely to last forever.
Just searched SEA to KUL via IST for spring season next year. Found 3 seats at 67.5k Turkish miles each all the way in Business class.
I suspect there will be a visit to Europe from the guy who drafted the Venture Rewards card last night.
When I click on search flight, the website goes blank? Whats the best way to book award tickets for Turkish
A Great Alaska Cruise Port like 15 mins from Ship. But u knew that Yacht Club member .. V Bernie